Group headed to Miami for National Red Bull Flugtag

Sep. 19, 2013

Jacob Greer, left, and Jared Marquette unload an aircraft at the Entrepreneur Center at Rolling Mill Hill. The aircraft will be used in the National Red Bull Flugtag event in Miami on Saturday. Marquette is a member of the five-person team employed by Nashville's Entrepreneur Center taking part in the competition. / Karen Kraft / The Tennessean

Written by

Jamie McGee

The Tennessean

A group from Nashville's Entrepreneur Center helped build the 'MVP' aircraft. / Submitted

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Building a homemade aircraft to run it off a pier in Miami is a lot like building a company. Kind of.

It’s a comparison the five-person team employed by Nashville’s Entrepreneur Center is using to help explain why they wanted to participate in the National Red Bull Flugtag event taking place Saturday in five cities across the country.

“We thought it would be fun, so we submitted this,” said Sam Lingo, chief operating officer of the Entrepreneur Center, who will be joined by fellow “Entrepreninjas” Robbie Goldsmith, John Murdock, Ryan Carter and Jared Marquette. “It’s a great example of everything we do day to day. It was an organic, bottom-up idea, not pushed down from the top.”

On Saturday, Marquette, the appointed pilot, will fly the 180-pound aircraft made of aluminum, foam and duct tape from a pier at Bayfront Park in Miami as teams also compete in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Dallas/Ft. Worth and Long Beach, Calif. The other crew members will push the aircraft up a 30-foot ramp before releasing it off the pier and will jump in the water after him – and that is all following a dance that the group choreographs to music.

To compete, the crafts must be homemade and self-assembled, have a wingspan no larger than 28 feet, weigh no more than 400 pounds, including the pilot, and must be human-powered. “Start looking at your friends’ calves,” the Flugtag website advises. The teams will be judged based on distance flown, creativity of the aircraft and showmanship, all competing for the glory of the title and prizes including a skydiving trip, tickets to a Red Bull sporting, music or arts event.

Like the startups developed at the center, the team formed partnerships through the experience, found investors – FLO {Thinkery} is underwriting the project – and relied on experts to help build the craft, as well as logged more than 50 hours so far to see the project come to fruition. Lingo credited Nashville engineer Chris LaBorde for much of the craft’s design and construction.

The aircraft is called “MVP,” after the emphasis the Entrepreneur Center places on the importance of creating a minimum viable product.

“We say, you have to get something to market,” Lingo said. “We made something that is the best flying machine rather than flash it up.”